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NEXT STEPS FOR U.S. FOREIGN POLICY ON

SYRIA AND IRAQ

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

NOVEMBER 19, 2014

Serial No. 113–223

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

PAUL COOK, California 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

SEAN DUFFY, Wisconsin 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

SEAN DUFFY, Wisconsin 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Robert Stephen Ford, senior fellow, Middle East Institute 

(former U.S. Ambassador to Syria) ..................................................................... 4

The Honorable Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies, 

Council on Foreign Relations .............................................................................. 15

Kimberly Kagan, Ph.D., founder and president, Institute for the Study of 

War ........................................................................................................................ 23

Steven Heydemann, Ph.D., vice president of applied research on conflict, 

United States Institute of Peace ......................................................................... 29

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Robert Stephen Ford: Prepared statement .................................. 7

The Honorable Elliott Abrams: Prepared statement ............................................ 17

Kimberly Kagan, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ........................................................ 25

Steven Heydemann, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ................................................... 31

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 52

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 53

The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress from the 

Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement .............................................. 54

(1)

NEXT STEPS FOR U.S. FOREIGN POLICY ON 

SYRIA AND IRAQ 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:25 p.m., in room 

2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. The subcommittee will come to order. Thank 

you so much. And I am so sorry that we had a slew of votes, but 

I always say, as a Cuban refugee, that we love getting interrupted 

by democracy in action. So thank you very much for sticking 

around. 

After recognizing myself and Ranking Member Deutch for 5 minutes each, because they are all coming back from the votes, for our 

opening statements, I will then recognize other members seeking 

recognition for 1 minute. We will then hear from our witnesses. 

And without objection, the witnesses’ prepared statements will be 

made a part of the record, and members may have 5 days to insert 

statements and questions for the record subject to the length limitation in the rules. 

The Chair now recognizes herself for 5 minutes. 

One of the first hearings this subcommittee held during this Congress focused on the situation in Syria 2 years into its violent conflict. This will be our 10th hearing dedicated to examining the Syrian conflict, the precarious situation in Iraq, and the rise of ISIL. 

I wish I could say that we are here today to see how things have 

gotten better, but as we know, we can’t say that. 

The common theme we have seen in our previous nine hearings 

is that the administration has failed to put together a coherent, a 

consistent, and decisive policies and strategies to address these 

threats. We have gone from remaining silent when the Syrian opposition first spoke out against Assad in March 2011, before all the 

foreign fighters and the terrorist groups coopted the anti-Assad 

campaign, to finally calling on Assad to step down 5 months after 

his brutal crackdown began, and back to remaining silent again, 

and allowing Assad to remain in power. 

We remain on the sidelines dithering and indecisive until President Obama laid down his now infamous red line on Syrian chemical weapons. As we know, Assad unleashed chemical weapons on 

2

his people, and that red line was crossed without any repercussions 

for Assad, damaging our credibility in the region. 

We now know Assad did not fully disclose all of his chemical 

weapons, materials, and stockpiles, and therefore, that threat still 

remains. Now, after over 3 years of fighting in Syria, President 

Obama has decided to arm and train Syrian rebels, but not in the 

fight against Assad, and these rebels are supposed to fight against 

ISIL, but only in a defensive posture. I believe this strategy is a 

mistake. 

In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Mosul earlier this year, 

Secretary Kerry said that Mosul’s fall took everyone by surprise. 

Yet 7 months before the fall, then Deputy Assistant Secretary Brett 

McGurk said, ‘‘ISIL has benefitted from a permissive operating environment due to inherent weaknesses of Iraqi security forces, poor 

operational tactics, and popular grievances. It has also benefitted 

from a sanctuary across the porous border in Syria, control of lucrative facilities there, such as oil wells, and regular movement of 

weapons and fighters between Syria and Iraq.’’

He would go on to say that we knew the Iraqis lacked the equipment for the relentless and effective operations against ISIL in 

Iraq. So how is it the President, the Secretary of State, and others 

in the administration can say that after Mosul fell that it was a 

surprise? The President then authorized air strikes in Iraq and 

eventually in Syria to target ISIL. This may be a case of too little 

too late, because it is becoming evident that we need a stronger 

and broader approach. 

Our allies in the gulf and the coalition are ready and eager to 

support us in the battle against ISIL, but they need to see a U.S. 

that is committed to the fight. They just aren’t seeing that now and 

expect a more comprehensive approach, which includes removing 

Assad from power, and that means addressing the Iranian issue. 

The Maliki government failed because it allowed Iran to exert 

undue influence over Iraq, which marginalized and angered the 

Sunni people in that country. Iran’s support for Assad has kept 

that thug in power and has caused the Syrian conflict to continue 

and escalate, soon entering its fourth year. Our strategy to fight 

ISIL will not be effective if we don’t have a comprehensive strategy 

that looks at Iraq, Syria, and ISIL linked together. 

In Iraq, thanks to the brave fighting from the Kurds and a new 

Iraqi Government, we have been able to stall the progress of ISIL 

fighters. Iraqi forces have been able to drive out ISIL fighters from 

oil refineries seeking to take aim at ISIL’s lifeline, its financial support. 

This terror group is well financed, and we need to target its 

source of income as part of our comprehensive approach if we are 

to succeed. However, more needs to be done. The new Iraqi Government must learn from the mistakes of Maliki and maintain stronger relations with the Kurds. One example can be helping in immediately rearming the Kurds. The Kurds have been fighting on the 

front lines against ISIL, and they are in real need of more weapons, ammunition, and supplies. 

But most importantly, the President needs a strategy that tackles the issues of Iraq, Syria, and ISIL together, because, if not, the 

3

crisis will spill over across the Middle East and pose an even greater threat to U.S. national security interest. 

And I am now pleased to yield to—Mr. Kennedy is walking 

over—be pleased to yield to members for their opening statements 

while we wait for Mr. Deutch. He is coming. So we will start with 

Mr. Kennedy. 

Mr. KENNEDY. It is a first-time experience for a freshman, thank 

you very much, to be first. Madam Chair, I just want to thank you 

for hosting a very important hearing. 

To the witnesses, thank you for your service. Thank you for being 

here yet again to brief this committee. I very much look forward 

to hearing what you have to say as we dive into some of the details 

and an update from all of you. So thank you very much. I look forward to your testimony. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Kennedy. 

And someone who has been in the fight over there, Mr. Cotton 

is recognized. 

Mr. COTTON. Well, with a late start to the hearing and 6 years 

of excessive and long-winded oratory before me in the Senate, I will 

cede back my time to the chair so we can hear from the witnesses. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Higgins of New York is recognized. 

Mr. HIGGINS. I would defer to the chair, too, to hear the witnesses. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you. 

Another veteran in our subcommittee we are so proud of, Mr. 

DeSantis. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

You know, I was really rattled when a couple of weeks ago The 

Wall Street Journal reported that the President wrote a secret letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from Iran seeking to enlist Iran’s 

support in the fight against ISIS. The idea that the way to defeat 

a terrorist group is to align ourselves with the world’s leading state 

sponsor of terrorism is flatly unacceptable, and I fear that that will 

be used as consideration to provide even more concessions to Iran 

for their nuclear program. And the result of this policy could be 

catastrophic where Iran acquires the bomb and they increase their 

sphere of influence throughout the Middle East where you have a 

Shi’a crescent from the Afghanistan border to the Mediterranean 

Sea. 

And so I am glad we are talking about ISIS, it is an important 

subject. And I just want to make my position clear: Iran has no 

constructive role in the fight against ISIS. They sponsor terrorism. 

They view us as the great Satan. They want to destroy Israel. And 

the President is way off base if he thinks otherwise. And I yield 

back. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. Schneider of Illinois. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the 

witnesses. In the interest of time, I will yield back my time so we 

can get to the testimony and hear their ideas for the way forward. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, sir. 

Dr. Yoho of Florida. 

4

Mr. YOHO. Thank you, Chairman Ros-Lehtinen, for holding this 

hearing, the 10th of its kind, and secondly, thank you to the witnesses that are coming before us today. 

Since 2011, the administration has been unable to adequately address the deteriorating situations in Iraq and Syria that have given 

rise to ISIL. Since ISIL’s rise, many innocent lives have been lost 

to the brutality, the crucifixions, the decapitation. They are thugs, 

plain and simple, thugs who have taken advantage of a power vacuum created by an unclear U.S. foreign policy that resembles a broken compass, and it has created uncertainty in the resolve of the 

United States and the direction for our allies to follow. I look forward to your testimonies, thank you. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much, Dr. Yoho. 

And now I am pleased to recognize our witnesses. Thank you for 

your patience. First we are pleased to welcome the Honorable Robert Ford, who is a 30-year veteran of the State Department. Ambassador Ford has served our country in Bahrain, in Iraq, in Algeria, and most recently in Syria. What have you been doing wrong? 

He has also served as the U.S. Ambassador to both Algeria and 

Syria. He is currently a resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and teaches at Johns Hopkins University. 

We welcome you, Ambassador Ford. 

We are also pleased to welcome back a good friend of our subcommittee, the Honorable Elliott Abrams, who is a senior fellow for 

Middle Eastern at the Council of Foreign Relations. Previously he 

has served as deputy assistant to the President and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George 

W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. foreign policy in the Middle 

East for the White House. 

Welcome, Mr. Abrams. 

And also returning is our good friend, Dr. Kimberly Kagan. She 

is the president and founder of the Institute for the Study of War. 

Previously she taught at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point 

and has served in Kabul from 2010 to 2012, working for General 

David Petraeus and General John Allen. 

Thank you. 

And last but not least, a very good gentleman. We welcome Dr. 

Steven Heydemann, who serves as the vice president for applied research on conflict and is also a senior advisor on the Middle East 

at the United States Institute for Peace. 

We have got quite a great lineup. Thank you very much. Your 

written statements will be made a part of the record. 

And, Ambassador Ford, we will begin with you. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ROBERT STEPHEN FORD, 

SENIOR FELLOW, MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE (FORMER U.S. 

AMBASSADOR TO SYRIA) 

Mr. FORD. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman and honorable members of the committee. It is really an honor to be with you 

this afternoon. 

I worked in Iraq on the ground for 41⁄2 years between 2003 and 

2010, and I worked on Syria for 3 years after that, including just 

a little over 1 year on the ground in Syria. And especially with respect to Syria, the situation has become really atrocious. Several of 

5

you talked about the threat that jihadi elements in Syria and Iraq 

pose, so I won’t go over that, but I think it is important to understand that what this really is, is it is one big conflict stretching 

from Syria across the border and over to Iraq. It is one conflict. 

There is a western front and there is an eastern front. 

The eastern front in Iraq where Iraqi Government policies alienated not only Sunni Arabs, but also Kurds, created such tensions 

inside Iraq, this is during the time of former Prime Minister 

Maliki, such tensions inside Iraq that resistance against the Islamic State was disjointed and quite ineffective. 

The good news over the last several months is that on the eastern front in Iraq the advance of the Islamic State has been blunted. 

Our strikes and the material assistance that we have provided 

have certainly contributed. And another little bit of good news from 

the Iraq side is that there is some progress, don’t want to overstate 

it, but there has been some progress resolving political differences 

between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government. 

That said, again on the eastern front in Iraq, the central government’s dependence on armed Shi’a militias is really very alarming. 

They are using Shi’a militias primarily as their weapon against the 

Islamic State. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International 

last month published very detailed reports, I recommend them to 

you, about the abuses which these Shi’a militias are committing 

against Sunni Arab communities where they operate in Iraq. And 

to be very clear, those abuses are going to prevent us from winning 

the hearts and minds of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs. And without Iraq’s 

Sunni Arabs, no sustainable containment, much less the destruction of the Islamic State in Iraq is going to be possible. 

Reining in those militias is going to be hard given the Iranian 

role in helping them. Thus, going forward, the administration is 

going to have to be quite tough about what to do with respect to 

the Shi’a militias and the Iranian influence. I have no doubt that 

our commitment to a genuinely inclusive political arrangement in 

Iraq is going to be really tested. 

I am going to say a few things about Syria. The situation, as I 

said, is absolutely terrible. The air strike campaign which we started in September has actually hurt the moderate opposition. It has 

discredited them on the street because we struck targets belonging 

to the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front, which had being fighting 

the Assad regime. I am not arguing that these elements should not 

have been hit, but at a minimum we should have been explaining 

to Syrians, both civilians and moderate fighters, what our strategy 

was and why we were hitting the al-Nusra Front. 

In addition, we have directly helped the outside regime by hitting 

Islamic State targets in eastern Syria that were fighting not Iraqis, 

these Islamic State units were not fighting the moderate opposition, they were fighting the Assad regime, and our air strikes enabled the Assad regime to break the siege of units surrounded in 

one of the provincial capitals in eastern Syria. In fact, what we did 

is we played the role of the Assad air force there. Interestingly, we 

have provided no close air support to moderate elements near Aleppo that are desperately fighting the Islamic State and also confronting the Assad regime. 

6

So going forward, if it continues like this, there isn’t going to be 

a moderate opposition in northern Syria, and I wonder then who 

is it exactly that is going to face the Islamic State. The U.N.’s capable envoy Steffan DeMistura is proposing a freeze, sort of a ceasefire, and it is a laudable idea, could allow humanitarian aid to get 

through. But there have been dozens of efforts to get a cease-fire, 

and they have almost all failed because there hasn’t been an enforcement mechanism. 

Nor will a freeze, a cease-fire, in Aleppo or Damascus address 

the jihadi problem. And so going forward, I think the administration is going to have to decide if it wants boots on the ground to 

confront jihadis or not, and if it does want boots on the ground, 

whose boots are they going to be? There aren’t any easy choices, 

but the perfect answer cannot be the enemy of the good at this 

point. 

Secondly, the administration is going to have to decide if it wants 

a political process or not, and if it does want a political process it 

is going to have to figure out how to get to one. The current path 

is not going to get to a political process and instead it is going to 

get to an environment where it is going to be even harder to fight 

jihadis. 

So with that rather grim assessment, thank you very much, and 

I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ford follows:]

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Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. I have a bill on the floor, which is wonderful 

news, but Mr. DeSantis is a very able substitute for me. Thank 

you. 

Mr. DESANTIS [presiding]. While we are changing chairman, Mr. 

Deutch, ranking member of the subcommittee, has arrived. 

So did you want to make your opening statement? 

I recognize the gentleman from Florida. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and my apologies to the 

witnesses. 

Thanks to our esteemed panel for appearing here today. I would 

like to recognize Ambassador Ford for your years of service and acknowledge all of the foreign service officers, military personal, and 

humanitarian workers who have committed themselves to addressing the crisis in Syria and in Iraq. 

Mr. Chairman, I believe this is now the 10th hearing related to 

either Iraq or Syria that this subcommitteehas held this Congress. 

President Obama first said that Bashar al-Assad must go in August 2011. We were told that it would be just a matter of months. 

Yet the Assad regime held one, aided in large part by an Iranian 

assistance, and the regime continued its murderous rampage for 

another 3 years. 

Over 200,000 people have died in this conflict, and while the 

international community may have succeeded in ridding Assad of 

his chemical weapons arsenal, he continues to use other brutal tactics, like barrel bombs, and has literally resorted to starving people 

to death by cutting off access to aid. 

As we struggled to determine who in the Syrian opposition we 

could work with, some in the gulf were busy funding extremist elements that had gained popular support simply because they were 

the best organized and on and off the battlefield. As horrified as 

we were at the tactics of groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, a group denounced for its violence by al-Qaeda, something worse was growing. The rise of ISIS has thrown Syria and Iraq into chaos, igniting 

thousands of years of sectarian conflicts, straining the fatigued Syrian opposition’s resources as they now battle both Assad and ISIS, 

and destabilizing Iraq to levels of violence not seen since before 

2006. 

ISIS grabbed ahold of large swaths of territory in Syria, marched 

into Iraq, rendering the border between these two countries obsolete, declaring an Islamic caliphate. When ISIS forces overran 

Mosul and began targeting religious minorities, the United States 

made the decision to intervene. I applaud the administration for 

working to then secure a broad coalition that includes over 60 

international partners acting in various capacities to combat this 

threat, but after months of air strikes, it is time to look at what 

we have accomplished and how we intend to proceed in our effort 

to, as the President said, degrade and destroy ISIS. 

Air strikes halted ISIS’ march toward Erbil, which would have 

put significant American interests and personnel at risk. Air 

strikes helped to rescue the Yazidi population from Mt. Sinjar and 

secure the Mosul dam. Air strikes have prevented the takeover of 

Kobani on the Turkish border. But air strikes won’t end the conflict; neither will American boots on the ground. The people of Iraq 

14

and Syria, with training and equipment from the U.S. and our 

partners, are the only ones who can end this conflict. 

To that end, we must continue to support the Peshmerga and the 

Syrian Kurds, the Iraqi security forces, and the moderate Syrian 

opposition, while simultaneously encouraging political processes in 

both Iraq and Syria. In Iraq, this government must work to unite 

with the Sunni communities against ISIS. This government cannot 

repeat the mistakes of the past. An inclusive dialogue that brings 

Sunni, Shiite, and Kurds to the table is the best and, frankly, only 

way to stabilize Iraq against ISIS forces. 

Regional partners must play a leading role in encouraging Iraq’s 

new leaders to work in concert with Sunni tribes in Anbar. Regional partners must also work with the U.S. to support the Iraqi 

and Syrian Kurds, and I am pleased that there has been progress 

made in allowing access to weapons and aid, as well as a significant step by the Turkish Government to allow the Peshmerga to 

pass through its territory. Turkey, a NATO ally, must play a vital 

role in international efforts to combat this threat, and I hope that 

Vice President Biden’s visit to Turkey will increase this cooperation. 

I understand these are complicated relationship. The Washington 

Post recently addressed these complexities explaining that the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or PYD, to which the Kurds fighting in 

Kobani belong, is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or 

PKK, which Turkey and the U.S. Have designated a terrorist organization. The PKK in turn has ties to the Assad regime, the Iraqi 

Kurds have close relations with Turkey and the U.S. and are affiliated with a different Syrian Kurdish faction, the Kurdish National 

Council, which backs the Syrian opposition and is at odds with the 

PYD over who should control the Kurdish regions of Syria. 

This only further emphasizes why the international community 

must work to unite opposition factions in both the fight against 

ISIS and the fight against Assad. I welcomed the announcement 

last week that the administration will reassess its strategy in Syria 

and Iraq, because this unfortunate reality is that as long as the 

Syrian conflict rages on, ISIS will continue its deadly assault in 

both Syria and in Iraq. It will continue its recruiting of foreign 

fighters. It will continue to build up proxy groups in the region. 

And with so much international focus on ISIS, Assad has continued 

his assault on the Syrian people with near impunity. It is no wonder that the Assad regime is continuing to purchase ISIS’ oil, generating millions per day in funding for its terrorist activities. As 

long as ISIS continues its atrocities, Assad will attempt to convince 

the world that he is now the lesser of two evils. 

Mr. Chairman, there are no easy answers here, and I commend 

the administration for the progress it has made. I urge our partners in the region to assist us in accelerating the training and 

equipping of Syrian opposition. I commend the allies in the region 

who have stepped up to this fight. But we, in conjunction with our 

partners, must have a long-term strategy, and I look to our witnesses today to provide us with some guidance. I thank you, and 

I yield back. 

Mr. DESANTIS. The gentleman yields back. And we will continue 

with the witness statements. I will go to Elliott Abrams. 

15

You are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ELLIOTT ABRAMS, SENIOR 

FELLOW FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS 

Mr. ABRAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I remember testifying here and in the Armed Services Committee a couple of years 

ago and saying there are 100,000 people killed and a couple of million refugees. Of course now about 200,000 dead, perhaps 7 million 

refugees, which are completely changing the politics, the economies, the demography of Jordan, Lebanon and Kurdistan. 

So you have asked in the name of this hearing what next, what 

steps. We all share the goal of defeating ISIS, the Islamic State, 

or destroying it, as the President once said. But I don’t think we 

have a strategy in place today that can achieve that goal, primarily 

because we do not really have a sensible Syria strategy. 

And our strategy in Iraq is comprehensible but unlikely to succeed, in part because, as the Ambassador said, there is one military 

theater here, there is an eastern front and a western front, but 

Syria and Iraq now are one theater because ISIS obliterated the 

border. So if we don’t have a Syria policy, we don’t really have an 

Iraq policy. 

To start with Iraq, the question really is, who is going to fight 

ISIS? And our answer seems to be a combination of the Iraqi Army, 

the Sunni tribes, and the Kurdish Peshmerga. They will fight, and 

they will defeat ISIS with our help. That strategy is not working 

yet, and one reason is that we have been so slow to commit the 

forces we are likely to need, a few hundred people, then 1,500 people, now another 1,500 people. 

Now, if we need exactly 3,000 advisors, I am glad we have the 

right number, but I wonder if it is the right number, and if not, 

if it is not, let’s commit the number we need now rather than in 

a drawn-out series of announcements that assure we will always 

have too few forces in theater. 

Moreover, though we have watched the Peshmerga having great 

difficulty dealing with ISIS, We continue to deny those forces military aid they seek and they need. That is not going to work. If our 

goal is to limit Iranian influence and defeat ISIS, strengthening the 

Peshmerga is the logical step, and we should take it. 

Last week a key Kurdish official, Mansour Barzani from the National Security Council, said this in an interview: ‘‘We have told the 

international forces there is a continuous need to support the 

Peshmerga with sophisticated arms in order to repel the ISIS enemies and defeat them as quickly as possible. The arms the 

Peshmerga have today are the old arms that came from the former 

Iraqi Army. As for the military assistance that reached the Kurdish 

region,’’ I am still quoting Barzani, ‘‘this comprises medium weaponry and ammunition. The only heavy weaponry that we have yet 

received is some antitank missiles supplied by Germany.’’

That is not going to work. ‘‘The Western states that have pledged 

military assistance to the Peshmerga have yet to meet their promises,’’ he also said. It is not going to work. 

16

As to the Sunnis, we seem to be waiting for Baghdad to arm 

them. A couple of weeks ago General Dempsey said the precondition for arming them is that the Government of Iraq has to 

be willing to arm the Sunni tribes. We are going to be waiting a 

long time, I think, before we see the Government of Iraq do that, 

and we are running out of time 

In Syria, I agree with the Ambassador. We don’t seem to have 

any answer at all to the question who is going to fight ISIS unless 

the answer is the Assad regime and Iran and Hezbollah. We have 

been very, very slow to help turn the rebels into an effective fighting force. It is very sad, it is tragic that the advice to help them 

from Secretary Clinton and CIA Director, later Secretary of Defense Panetta, and Secretary Kerry was rejected by the President. 

So now we seem to be falling into a kind of alliance with Iran 

and the Assad regime. And for all the reasons the Ambassador 

said, it is not going to work. It was really the Assad regime’s brutality that created ISIS. A Syria policy that relies on Iran and 

Hezbollah and the Assad regime cannot succeed. 

I would just quote Ambassador Fred Hof, who was, with Ambassador Ford, one of the key Obama administration officials handling 

Syria policy until he resigned. He noted that the White House 

press statement introducing their November 7 fact sheet on Iraq 

strategy doesn’t mention Syria, and as Hof says, ‘‘the Assad regime 

cannot, short of its voluntary departure, be part of a legitimate 

governance answer in Syria.’’

The next steps, I think, arm the Peshmerga, arm the Sunni 

tribes in Iraq, arm the Syrian rebel groups. To defeat ISIS, we 

must change the situation in Syria. The Assad regime is a jihadi 

manufacturing machine. We face a situation today, as the Ambassador said, where we occupy the Syrian air space, but Assad’s air 

force can, with impunity, carry out any crime against humanity, 

any air strike against civilians, and we do nothing about it. 

If we continue to target and weaken ISIS without stepping up 

our help to the rebels, we are clearing the field for the Assad regime. There is no magic formula we can have here. As Fred Hof 

put it, ‘‘A Goldilocks approach of trying to recruit and build a force 

just good enough to beat ISIL but not quite good enough to beat 

the regime simply won’t work.’’

Thanks again for inviting me to testify. This is a complicated situation, as all of you have said. Every path ahead is fraught with 

difficulty. But this is the 10th hearing, and I just want to thank 

you for the committee’s diligence in looking at Iraq and Syria over 

the past 3 years. Thank you. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Abrams follows:]

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Mr. DESANTIS. We will now go to Dr. Kagan for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF KIMBERLY KAGAN, PH.D., FOUNDER AND 

PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR 

Ms. KAGAN. Thank you very, very much to you and to all of the 

members. 

We face a real threat emanating from the Middle East, and it is 

not contained simply to the Middle East. We are looking at an incredibly dangerous enemy in the Islamic State and its rival living 

in Syria, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Nusra 

Front. And we are looking at two terrorist groups right now that 

are competing with one another for stature and global posture in 

order to claim the legitimacy and the leadership of the global 

jihadist movement. There is a huge amount at stake in Iraq and 

Syria, and it is not contained within their borders. 

I have rendered to you in my written testimony my assessment 

agreeing very much with the members of the committee, with Ambassador Ford, with Ambassador Abrams it’s fact the American 

strategy in Iraq and Syria is flawed. Fatally, that its focus simply 

on degrading and destroying ISIS at the expense of looking at the 

regional and global conflicts that compromise the security of the 

United States and in which the United States has incredible interests is damaging the way we can approach future years and future 

generations as an American power. 

In point of fact, our strategy being pursued in isolation against 

the Islamic State, ignoring Assad, ignoring the rather extraordinary and complex dynamics within the global jihadist movement 

itself is really creating conditions for a fight that will last not just 

the coming years, but the coming generations. So we have a problem, and we need to solve it, and those solutions will not be simple, 

they will not be facile, and they will not be easy. 

We must recognize that our current strategy is not only driving 

the moderate opposition into a degree of marginalization such that 

it will no longer exist and flourish when we think that we really 

must rely on it to succeed in Syria. We are also actually creating 

conditions in which the competition between Jabhat al-Nusra and 

the Islamic State are going to characterize the future fight for 

Syria. 

We also, I think, are really underestimating the way in which 

the temporary solutions that the Iraqi Government and security 

forces are undertaking against ISIS right now inside of Iraq will 

actually drive the conflict over the long term. As Ambassador Ford 

noted, the Iraqi security forces are essentially not the same Iraqi 

security forces that we left behind in 2011. They are now plussed 

up with command and control elements, as well as fighting forces 

that come from Iranian-backed proxy groups that had, in fact, been 

fighting inside of Syria. And so what we are actually watching on 

the ground in the temporary halting of ISIS through deprivation, 

through denial of terrain in Bayji, and through denial of terrain in 

Jurf al-Sakhar, a very important stronghold south of Baghdad, is 

actually really creating the conditions in which an Iranian-backed 

Iraqi Government, based mostly around the security forces that are 

run by Iran, can actually establish a frontline that runs through 

the Shi’a areas of Iraq and pushes the Islamic State into a wedge 

24

between Iraq and Syria. These conditions, frankly, are allowing the 

Islamic State to consolidate its gains inside of Iraq because of the 

sheer fear of the Sunni population at facing something that is not 

a legitimate security force but really an arm of the Iranian Government. 

We need to refocus our policy. If we want there to be moderate 

opposition to Assad and if we want the Sunni tribes actually to rise 

up against al-Qaeda, we need to provide them with asymmetric capabilities on the battlefield so that they can achieve those objectives. Namely, they need close air support, they need command and 

control from us, and they need the ability to change the game so 

that they can survive the dual and triple threats that they are facing. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Kagan follows:]

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Mr. DESANTIS. We will now go to Dr. Heydemann for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF STEVEN HEYDEMANN, PH.D., VICE PRESIDENT 

OF APPLIED RESEARCH ON CONFLICT, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE 

Mr. HEYDEMANN. Thank you, Mr. DeSantis, and my thanks as 

well to Chairman Ros-Lehtinen and Ranking Member Deutch, and 

other members of the subcommittee for convening this hearing. I 

have to begin my comments by noting that the views I express 

today are solely my own and do not represent the U.S. Institute of 

Peace, which does not take positions on policy issues. 

As the chairman noted in her opening remarks and as a number 

of my colleagues here today have also stressed, more than 3 years 

since Syria collapsed into civil war the U.S. still lacks a coherent, 

integrated strategy either to achieve a political solution to the Syrian conflict or to degrade and destroy ISIS. A reassessment of Syria 

policy by the White House is called for and would be a welcome acknowledgment of the need for such a strategy. 

Given conditions on the ground, the relevant questions that a review must address concern not only what can be done to degrade 

and destroy ISIS, but how U.S. policy can help consolidate effective 

governance by moderate opposition actors, retrieve the possibility 

of a negotiated settlement of the Syrian conflict, and help Syrians 

preserve a path between extremism and dictatorship. 

An effective response to these questions will require moving beyond the policy of containment that has defined U.S. policy for the 

past 3 years. It will also require moving beyond a policy of local 

cease-fires. Instead, the starting points for an integrated strategy 

need to include a clear understanding that efforts to degrade and 

destroy ISIS either in Syria or in Iraq will not be successful unless 

they are accompanied by broader U.S. engagement anchored in a 

framework for moving Syria toward a political transition based on 

the Geneva Protocol of June 2012. 

The proposed train-and-equip program is an important piece of 

such a strategy. This should not only be placed on a fast track, as 

Secretary Hagel has promised will be the case, it also should be 

given a mission that extends beyond containing or rolling back ISIS 

to include operations targeting the Assad regime forces. 

To succeed, however, the train-and-equip mission will also require more extensive support from the U.S. and its regional partners through the establishment of a no-fly zone over northern Syria 

and a buffer zone inside Syria’s border with Turkey. These should 

be supported by the active participation of broad regional and 

international coalition. 

To ensure that appropriate command and control is in place as 

fighters become operational, it will be necessary to link U.S.-

trained forces to effective elements within existing Syrian opposition institutions. Without such a framework, the U.S. train-andequip mission will be precarious, the effectiveness of U.S.-trained 

forces against ISIS diminished, and the possibilities for a political 

solution to the Syrian conflict remote. With them, U.S.-trained opposition forces will be able to operate from Syrian territory with 

oversight provided by Syrian military and political leadership. In 

addition, effective elements among the opposition’s leadership will 

30

be able to move inside the country where they will be better positioned to support local councils and strengthen governance across 

opposition-held areas of the country. 

Perhaps most important, however, the combination of a protected 

buffer zone and a better trained and better equipped armed opposition has the potential to affect the strategic calculus of the Assad 

regime, revive negotiations, and advance efforts to achieve a political transition that includes acceptable elements from the regime 

and the opposition and preserves what remains of the institutions 

of the Syrian state. 

The Assad regime has been relentless in its pursuit of a military 

victory, secure in the support it receives from Russia, Iran, and 

Hezbollah. The regime is persuaded that international assistance 

from the opposition for the opposition will remain too limited to affect conditions on the ground. The integrated strategy outlined in 

my written testimony offers opportunities to more effectively challenge the Assad regime, degrade ISIS, strengthen alternatives to 

extremism and dictatorship, and create meaningful incentives for 

both the regime and the opposition to negotiate a political end to 

the Syrian conflict. 

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Heydemann follows:]

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Mr. DESANTIS. The Chair will recognize himself for 5 minutes. 

Let me start. I think that, and I think the witnesses enumerated 

this pretty well, obviously we have the Iraqi forces and we have 

had mixed results with them and they have had their problems. 

You have the Syrian opposition, which has some very unsavory elements, and there is obviously a range in their capability. But the 

one group that I think most of us here in the committee and in the 

Congress recognize are pretty strongly pro-American are the Kurdish Peshmerga. And, Ambassador Abrams, I concur with your recommendation. 

What we are hearing, though, the frustration is we claim we are 

going to send them these weapons and they have got to get everything through Baghdad. We asked Secretary Kerry when he was 

here, look, we need to get them the weapons, we can’t be going 

through this. And he said, well, that is on you guys, we are just 

following the law, we are not allowed to send weapons directly. So 

is that your understanding? And, I mean, don’t you think it would 

be better for us to just send the stuff directly to them so we can 

expedite this? 

Mr. ABRAMS. I think it would be better. That way we would know 

it is getting through. We know now that it is not getting through 

and that they are fighting with basically rifles and machine guns, 

nothing better than that, no helicopters, for example, which would 

be so useful to them. As to the legal aspect of this, I would bow 

to Ambassador Ford, who no doubt have to handle this part. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Ambassador, do we need to act in Congress? I 

mean, Secretary Kerry, I believe, said his hands were tied and he 

said, hey, that is on you guys, you guys need to change the law. 

That is interesting. That line of reasoning doesn’t seem to apply to 

immigration. But nevertheless, go ahead. 

Mr. FORD. I can’t speak to what American law might be applicable, Congressman DeSantis. I can only say that on the Iraq side, 

the Iraqi constitution, which Kurds ratified as well back in 2005, 

says that the central government is responsible for defense. And so 

I think that is one of the reasons the United States has gone 

through that. There should be a way to negotiate protocol, however, 

between the Kurds and the central government in Baghdad to expedite things. I mean, frankly, Iraq is living in extraordinary times, 

and we would expect their political leaders to rise to the occasion. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Now, you had mentioned the primary defense of 

Baghdad is really these Shiite militia groups. And I know you have 

spent a lot of time in Iraq. I was in Iraq 2007 and 2008, and during 

that time U.S. forces were sustaining a lot of casualties from Iranian-backed Shiite militia groups, EFP attacks, very deadly. Are 

these basically the same groups as those groups that were attacking U.S. servicemembers? 

Mr. FORD. They are indeed. They include Asa-ib Ahl al-Haq, 

which was responsible for numerous attacks against American soldiers. During your time there, Congressman, you might remember 

the attack in Hilla that killed five U.S. service men. That is Asaib Ahl al-Haq. Kata-ib Hezbollah, which is another one that we 

confronted, and the Badr Corps, which although I am not aware 

that they ever attacked American service men, they did kidnap me 

in 2003, so they have a special place in my heart. 

37

And in all of these instances, Congressman, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Quds Force, is providing a great deal of material assistance, command and control. It is amazing how they don’t 

hide this, the commander, General Soleimani, is regularly photographed on the front lines. 

Mr. DESANTIS. That was going to be my next question, and I appreciate that. 

Dr. Kagan, and I acknowledge and I mentioned in my opening 

statement the President wrote a letter to the Ayatollah in Iran. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that was to show that there is 

some common interest to fight ISIS with Iran and the United 

States. I made my feelings, no, I don’t think we have common interests. I think that that would make the situation worse. Do you 

agree that thinking that Iran would be an ally against terrorism 

would be a bad policy? 

Ms. KAGAN. The Iranians are enemies of the United States and 

have based their regime on an ideology of opposition to America. 

They do not share our interests and we do not share theirs. So although we may have a minor interest that in narrow circumstances 

is similar, namely that neither of us likes the Islamic State and 

both see it as a danger, we do not have the same end states in 

mind for Iraq, for Syria, for the region, or for the world. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Thank you for that. And, yeah, the thing is we 

will sometimes hear, well, Iran, they are Shi’a, they oppose Sunni 

terrorism, and that is not even really true. I do know that they are 

butting heads with ISIS. But Iran, they funded al-Qaeda operations, they funded of course Hamas. They are one of Hamas’s biggest backer, which is a Sunni terrorist group. So Iran, I think, does 

not have a constructive role in this, and I think that would be really dangerous to go in that direction. 

My time has expired, and I will recognize the ranking member, 

Mr. Deutch, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Heydemann, what does a political solution look like for 

Syria? Does it only focus on Assad? How does ISIS’ control over 

these large swaths of land fit into that strategy. And is there a circumstance—I guess I would throw this open to the panel—is there 

a circumstance in which the coalition would actually act against 

Assad or would the United States then lose regional support if we 

took that approach? 

Mr. HEYDEMANN. Thank you. Thank you, Congressman. 

One of the reasons that I focus on the Geneva Protocol as a starting point, as a framework for a transition, is because it remains the 

only framework which has the agreement of the United States, 

Russia, and a number of other critical stakeholders in this conflict, 

but also because it sets out a process for determining what a negotiated transition would look like that I believe offers the best possibility for achieving some form of power sharing, an outcome in 

which it seems very difficult to imagine that the existing leadership 

of the Assad regime, including President Assad himself, would play 

a role, but one that I believe holds out some promise for addressing 

some of the deep and intractable conflicts that sustain the civil 

war. 

38

So the first step, it seems to me, in defining what a political settlement would look like would be to create a negotiating context 

that would permit the parties to the conflict to move forward in 

achieving the goals established by the Geneva Protocol, which include creating an interim governing body on the basis of mutual 

consent of both the regime and the opposition, which would exercise full executive authority, and which could initiate the next 

steps in a political process that would achieve that broader political 

solution. 

So I continue to see the Geneva Protocol as a useful tool in moving toward a political solution of the conflict. 

Mr. DEUTCH. I had said earlier that as we look at this and as 

we look back, it was the expectation that the Assad government, 

the regime was going to fall, it was only a matter of when. We 

heard that not just from our administration, but from leaders in 

the region. That has not happened. 

Ambassador Ford, what should we be saying about our expectations for Assad? Is it possible to wage the battle we are waging now 

against ISIS without making clear what our ultimate intentions 

are with respect to Assad and how we are going to accomplish 

them? 

Ambassador Abrams, you, as well. 

Mr. FORD. I don’t see how it is going to be possible to contain, 

much less roll back the Islamic State on the western side of this 

conflict in Syria as long as Bashar al-Assad is running Syria in a 

way where people can’t see an end to it. 

It would be great to get to a political negotiation such as Dr. 

Heydemann was talking about. We tried that in Geneva, and, 

frankly, we got nowhere. And the opposition in Geneva, I have to 

mention this, Congressman Deutch, put a very reasonable proposal 

on the table in the negotiating opening. The U.N. was very pleased 

with it. The Assad regime completely refused to discuss it. And so, 

in order to get to a political process, there is just going to have to 

be more pressure on the Assad regime. 

Now, in the 9 months since Geneva the regime has suffered very 

heavy casualties, and there is more unhappiness among supporters 

of the Assad regime than there was at the start of 2014. It is very 

noticeable. There are demonstrations. There are a lot of complaints. 

The regime has responded with arrests. 

So if there is a way to reach out to elements of that regime, to 

its supporters, and say, look, it doesn’t have to be a choice between 

Assad and jihadi crazies for Syria, there is a third way, then I can 

imagine moving forward along the lines of Dr. Heydemann’s. But 

in order to do that, you got to have a little more pressure on the 

regime, too, and we got to get the Russians and the Iranians on 

board. They also pay attention to the situation on the ground. I go 

back to what I said, more pressure on the ground. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Ambassador Abrams. 

Mr. ABRAMS. Well, I agree with that. I think you are not going 

to be able to achieve that at a negotiating table a result that is 

independent of the actual facts on the ground. The facts on the 

ground are what we need to change first. This is a 75 percent 

Sunni country. It is impossible to think of a role for Assad after 

he has spent 3 years slaughtering Sunnis. 

39

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you. 

Mr. DESANTIS. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes my friend from Florida, Ted Yoho, for 

5 minutes. 

Mr. YOHO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, panel, for being here. And what I am looking from 

you, I have got 5 minutes, is a new dynamic, I mean, it won’t serve 

us to go back other than to remember how we got here, to where 

we go from this point because I have heard all you guys, and I 

think you guys are very adroit at what you say, I think your experience speaks highly for itself, but it is where we go from here and 

the policies that you can give us information on how we can bring 

up legislation to move this situation forward without American 

boots on the ground. 

As you well know, we have had 1.2 million people in Afghanistan 

and Iraq that are coming back. It is estimated that 600,000 to 

800,000 of our troops are going to have some form of PTSD. This 

is not a road I am willing to go down, but yet this needs to come 

to an end. Because what I see is an amorphous region with no leader, with no stable government, and we are fighting an ideological 

member unit, ISIS, that has no country, they have no defined leader, per se, as a normal government would that we would traditionally fight, yet they are the best armed terrorist organization that 

the world has ever seen. And the best armed, and it scares me to 

think that the arms they are using are the arms we had in Iraq. 

And so, I would like to hear real quickly from each of you. And, 

Ambassador Abrams, you laid out fairly well what I was looking 

for. 

So, Ambassador Ford, if we could start with you. Legislation that 

you would say if you would do this, this would help bring stability 

to that area. 

Mr. FORD. There is no easy way to get stability back to that area. 

I want to be very clear. 

Mr. YOHO. We have to have a starting point, though, and if it 

is arming the Kurds here, so be it. 

Mr. FORD. Here are three things that I think the Congress could 

usefully do. Number one, move forward on an authorization to use 

military force. It sends a very good message to the Russians. It 

sends a really good message to the Iranians. And, frankly, it makes 

Bashar al-Assad nervous. We are not going to be able to get to the 

political discussion that Dr. Heydemann was talking about, the negotiation, if Bashar al-Assad doesn’t feel nervous. 

So a solid vote in favor of an authorization to use military force 

would be very helpful. It sends the right signals. 

Second thing, I believe you have coming up again a reauthorization for the use of American funding to train elements, vetted elements of the moderate Syrian opposition. This job is becoming 

harder because of things that we have done over the last 2 months. 

That said, that said, it needs to be approved again because it is 

taking a long time to stand up, but it isn’t going to get any easier 

in 4 or 5 or 6 months. They need to keep moving it forward. I 

would like them to go faster, but as I said, you can’t have the perfect be the enemy of the good. 

40

Third thing, insist, demand that there be accountability among 

the Iraqi security forces and these Shi’a militia in return for receiving American assistance. We cannot have a situation where the 

Shi’a militia, Dr. Kagan explained it as well, where they are literally driving the Sunnis into the arms of the Islamic State. We 

will not win on the eastern front if we do not have those Iraqi 

Sunnis on board. 

Mr. YOHO. All right. I am going to skip over you, Ambassador 

Abrams, and go to Dr. Kagan. 

Ms. KAGAN. I agree with all of Ambassador Ford’s recommendations, and in addition I would say that there are two more things 

that Congress can do to show our strength, not necessarily to use 

our force. One is that you need to take on sequester and ensure 

that we have the defense of the United States and the ability to 

project power in a way that our allies and our enemies can recognize not only now, but over time, and ensure that we have the 

greatest military in the world still to come. 

And secondly, I do encourage you to consider the needs of our intelligence services. And although those intelligence services are 

under strain both from the pressures that have resulted from the 

Snowden leaks and also from sequestration, we have a global 

jihadist threat that is coming to the west, and you need to resource 

our Intelligence Community such that they have the wherewithal 

to identify such threats well ahead of time and inform the executive about how it should act. 

Mr. YOHO. And, unfortunately, I am out of time. 

Dr. Heydemann, if I could get your recommendations and build 

upon those other ones, I would greatly appreciate it, and we will 

make sure we institute those. 

Mr. HEYDEMANN. Very quickly, two very quick points. 

I think it is entirely plausible to use a conversation about authorization and appropriation of a train-and-equip program to remove 

the artificial restriction on that program as focused solely on ISIS 

and not on changing conflict dynamics on the ground more broadly 

and expanding the program. 

Second, as I mentioned in my comments, the regime is fully persuaded of the lack of will of the U.S. to engage more deeply, and 

it seems to me that, as Ambassador Ford said, an authorization for 

the use of military force that explicitly included the possibility of 

a no-fly zone and buffer zone would send an extraordinarily powerful signal to the Assad regime. 

Mr. YOHO. Thank you, sir. 

I yield back, and I apologize to the members for going over. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Gentleman’s time has expired. 

And the Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New York, 

Mr. Higgins, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. HIGGINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just want to try to provide some context to a situation that I 

think is sometimes presented as black and white, and there is a 

lot of gray area. And it is particularly true in Syria where you have 

the Free Syrian Army, which is made up of some 1,500 militias, 

which are very organic. They are sectarian. They are mostly, at 

least, the most effective seemingly Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda 

41

affiliates. And we often talk about funding and arming the moderate component of that element, which really makes up a very, 

very small percentage of the larger group. And I am also looking at America spent $25 billion building up 

an Iraqi Army that consists of 283,000 fighters, active; another 

528,000 reserves. We talked about in Kurdistan the Peshmerga, 

which have demonstrated to be reliable allies to the United States. 

Kurdistan is pretty successful within the context of the Middle 

East. It is pluralistic. Minority rights are respected. They have 

been again proven very, very effective. 

The last estimates I saw of ISIS in terms of their numbers was 

from the Central Intelligence Agency, and there were 41,000 estimated ISIS fighters. And it seems to me if you have you an Iraqi 

Army of well over 280,000, you have got the Peshmerga between 

250,000 and 350,000, it begs the question, why is it that we are not 

more effective in degrading and destroying ISIS immediately? And 

I think it comes back to the issue that we kind of gloss over, and 

that is the political issue. And Nouri al-Maliki and his successor 

have not proven to be inclusive in Iraq. So the first test of this $25 billion Army that we helped create 

in Iraq, they ran. They ran. There are political problems now between Iraq and Kurdistan which keeps Iraq from allowing an effective supply of the Peshmerga up in northern Iraq. 

So I think the conclusion is that when thereis no political center 

in Iraq or in Syria, there are only sides. And I think we are sometimes led to believe that there is a good side and a bad side. Well, 

there is often—or there is—a bad side and arguably even a worse 

side in both of those places, and unless and until you have some 

kind of recognition of minority rights and inclusion of various 

groups there, you are never going to have a political situation that 

is stable which would allow for those countries to evolve. 

So what is it that we can do for them that essentially they are 

responsible for exclusively to create a level of stability that would 

allow us to fight back effectively or assist them in fighting back effectively against groups like ISIS? 

Sorry. A long way to get to a question, but go ahead. 

Mr. FORD. Two things come immediately to mind, Congressman 

Higgins. The first is there are terrible problems of corruption in the 

Iraqi Army, developed even before Nouri al-Maliki. It was back 

even in 2005. The very first defense minister in the new Iraqi interim government stole over $1 billion. You mentioned $25 billion. 

There is $1 billion right there; $1.2 billion, according to the inspector general’s office. So there was a problem of leadership and there 

was a problem of corruption, and I think we absolutely have to 

hold them more accountable. 

That often means that we say we can’t work with you on this 

issue until you fix these seven, eight, nine issues over there. It 

means, frankly, understanding that if they won’t fix themselves, in 

some cases, there is nothing we can do, and we have to be honest 

about that. 

Second thing, which I should have mentioned with Congressman 

Yoho’s question, in order to do these things, to insist on accountability, we have to step up our own discussions, probably very 

blunt discussions behind closed doors, but that requires that we be 

42

able to get out and about. And we have a large diplomatic team in 

Iraq. We have a large diplomatic team in places like Turkey and 

Jordan where Syrian opposition people are located. They have to be 

able to get out and move around. 

And I am going to be very honest with you. In the post-Benghazi 

atmosphere, it is much harder for professional diplomats to get out 

and do the kind of discussions, blunt talk, that I was just talking 

about, and that is going to also have to be changed. 

Mr. DESANTIS. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Chair now recognizes the gentlemen from Illinois, Mr. Kinzinger, 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you all for being here. 

When we pulled out of Iraq in 2011, did any of you all not seeing 

this coming? I mean, I ask that, I guess, rhetorically. I mean, I am 

no, like, crystal ball owner, but I knew this was going to happen. 

Right? I knew that if we didn’t leave a residual force, this was 

going to fall apart. 

By the way, it is a great lesson for Afghanistan as we look forward too, the importance of a residual force there. 

To the folks that talk about how basically we don’t want to engage in this fight, we don’t get to pick the world we live in. Right? 

I mean, I would wish a different world if I could, I would wish a 

different situation if I could. But the United States can only be defeated in a case like this by our will. We are never going to be defeated militarily. I think our will was defeated in 2011 with the 

pullout of Iraq. 

I think when with you put a red line down to say no U.S. Boots 

on the ground, you are in essence saying that, okay, the existence 

of ISIS is unacceptable unless it takes American boots to destroy 

ISIS, in which case American boots are worse, the existence of 

American boots on the ground are worse than the presence of ISIS. 

So, I mean, I think we have to never put on the table what we 

are not willing to do. It sends a very bad message. 

I just got back from Iraq about 5 or 6 weeks ago with this committee, and I have got to tell you, I went into Turkey, met with 

leadership of the Free Syrian Army. I was heartbroken by how 

they have continually been let down by the government. Promised 

no-fly zones of protection, promised arming and equipping, training 

and equipping, and over 3 years waiting for this kind of manna to 

come down to help them in their fight, and instead they continue 

to fight a two-front war against a brutal Assad. 

Which, by the way, Bashar al-Assad, if I hear it again I am going 

to pull my hair out, is no friend of the United States, no friend to 

Christianity, no friend to the West. He is a brutal dictator that 

slaughters his own people and created an environment for ISIS to 

explode and exist today. Period. No Christ I follow, no Christ I look 

up to would call a guy like Bashar al-Assad a friend. He is a murderer and he is a brutal dictator, and he needs deposed, and hopefully peacefully, but he needs to be gone, and that needs to be the 

focus of the mission of the United States of America. This is going 

to take a long time, but if you are going to kill the incubator of 

ISIS, you are going to destroy the incubator of ISIS, it starts with 

the regime of Bashar al-Assad. 

43

The other thing I want to say about that, so 1 year ago or so 

when we were debating the red line in Syria, I took my fair share 

of hits from people calling my office because I was very aggressive 

about the need to follow through on the strike in Syria. I also remember that as that discussion was happening, all over the world 

there were discussions about an off-ramp for Bashar al-Assad, 

maybe we can get him $1⁄2 billion and send him to some other 

country and let him live the rest of his life in peace. 

After we failed to enforce the red line, there has not been one serious discussion about Bashar al-Assad being deposed from power. 

That is what happens when you put something on the table and 

you don’t follow through with it. 

When I went into Erbil as part of this trip, I saw the tragedy 

of a girl who has her two younger siblings with her, lost her parents, one of the kids is 5 years old with cerebral palsy that can’t 

even be fed, he looks like a skeleton, because everybody was caught 

off guard by the intensity of this. 

This is not a problem that is going to go away by us exercising 

restraint. I don’t think we need large amounts of boots on the 

ground, but I think when you take them off the table, I think you 

just show the enemy what you are not willing to do and you encourage them. 

I am encouraged by the air strikes. I think it is important to do. 

But, Dr. Kagan, let me ask you. How does the amount of air strikes 

and the intensity of air strikes we have done compare to prior engagements, for instance, the opening of Iraq in 2003? 

Ms. KAGAN. The numbers of air strikes that we are conducting 

now do not, in my opinion as a military historian, constitute an air 

campaign of the size and scale that we saw, for example, at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. We are 

talking about an order, two orders of magnitude difference. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Yeah. In a country the size of California, by the 

way, basically. 

And so you think about that. I fly ISR. I still fly in the Air 

Guard, and I can tell you, ISR, there is all kinds of ways to acquire 

your target. One of them is by simply looking at it. That is what 

we have to rely on basically now, because we don’t have assets on 

the ground that can target things. 

So I can tell you 100 times I have looked at trucks with people 

in the back of them that look like fighting men, and we are not 

sure if they are fighting men or not. And so what happens in an 

air campaign like against ISIS today is they probably don’t strike 

that target, because you don’t have other verification, because the 

last thing you want to do is to strike a truck where it is a family 

going off to a family reunion. 

And so, look, I am supportive of the President doing something 

in Iraq. He needs to step it up. I think we have to look at giving 

heavy weapons to the Peshmerga who are fighting our own heavy 

weapons that were stolen from ISIS. And we need to call this what 

it is. The President has got to talk to the American people about 

what ISIS is, the existence of them, how unacceptable it is, and 

how he will refuse to let them exist in the future. 

With that, I thank you. I spent most of my time talking, but I 

yield back. 

44

Mr. DESANTIS. Gentleman yields back. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 

Schneider, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, again, thank you to the witnesses. 

Dr. Kagan, in your written testimony you talked about that we 

must raise our gaze from the tactics of fighting ISIS, and then 

talked about a fight that is not going to last years but run across 

generations. And I would like to spend my limited time here talking a little bit about that. And I think we have to look back, because what we see here is as much as anything a conflict that runs 

across thousands of years. You have the split between the Persians 

and the Arabs, the Sunni-Shi’a split. Also I think we are seeing the 

collapse of the borders from 1916, the Sykes-Picot borders, and the 

associated state structures with that in Iraq and Syria for sure, 

and then as you mentioned, the rise of global jihad. 

In all of those, if I think through and listen to what you guys 

are saying, we have a number of objectives. To limit Iranian influence. To preserve—and I am saying this as a statement, but it is 

a question—preserve the nation-states that were created in 1916, 

but to do it in a way that does not include—certainly does not include Assad. To find a path within those states for pluralism that 

bridges the gap between the Sunnis and the Shi’as. And within all 

of that to defeat ISIS and global jihadism in general. 

What does that strategy look like across generations as we raise 

our gaze? And I will open that to the entire panel. 

Ms. KAGAN. Thank you. It is a wonderful question. 

I actually want to go back and challenge just one thing in the 

premise of the question, which is the notion that the kind of conflict we are seeing right now in Iraq and Syria is the kind of conflict that is thousands of years old. The point is that there are actually rather unique and special conditions in the history of these 

policies that is generating this tension now—a failure of states, a 

failure of leaders, and a deliberate radicalization of the population. 

And the reason I stress that is because we can think that engaging in diminishing a regional sectarian war is impossible if we really think about it as a war that has lasted 1,000 years, but if we 

actually see it as a product of states’ geopolitics and ideology of a 

moment, I think we have more room to work forward. 

So what do we do? Well, the first thing I would say is we need 

to make sure that generations more fighters are not created right 

now. What we are seeing in Syria reminds me of what we saw in 

Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s. And so protraction of this conflict is not in the interest of the United States at all, because it will 

create not only a cadre of seasoned fighters on all sides, pro-Assad 

regime, pro-Iranian, pro-ISIS, pro-al-Qaeda. It will not only create 

those seasoned fighters and give them their combat patches so that 

they can fight in the future, it will actually create, as it has, refugees who are extraordinarily vulnerable to radicalization and a degree of success for global jihadis that will attract people who are 

vulnerable. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. I am sorry to take back time which is so limited. 

Ambassador Ford, your perspective having been on the ground 

and spent so much time with the people throughout this territory? 

45

Mr. FORD. Congressman, there is really one root cause of what 

is happening in the Islamic State and al-Nusra. Across the Levant 

and into Iraq there is a Sunni Arab population that feels it is 

under attack, feels that it has been tread upon. In Syria it has suffered probably almost 150,000 killed. In Iraq that population, 

which is a minority, ruled the country, but since rule was wrested 

away by the American forces in 2003, it feels there it has also been 

tread upon, treated unfairly, et cetera. 

You can’t fix this problem until you deal with some of those 

grievances, and you deal with some of those grievances by figuring 

out ways to have power sharing in central governments, whatever 

the borders are, by having large measures of decentralization, 

which is going to be new in that region. They have not had that 

before, but that is clearly what is going to be needed, it has worked 

with the Kurds and it will work with the Sunni Arabs in Iraq, I 

think. And you are going to need help from the regional states, 

whether that be border control so that jihadis don’t slip over the 

border and go fight, whether that be stopping money flows from 

private citizens, or whether that be agreeing on a broad framework 

of what the states should look like in order to get to that political 

deal. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Thank you. I am out of time. I yield back. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the incoming junior Senator from the 

great State of Arkansas, Mr. Cotton. 

Mr. COTTON. Thank you. 

Dr. Kagan, how many troops did General Lloyd Austin recommend that the President retain in Iraq in 2011? 

Ms. KAGAN. Mr. Cotton, I do not remember the exact number, 

but I have heard in media that we were talking about 10,000 to 

20,000 troops. 

Mr. COTTON. Okay. And the President didn’t take that action. He 

withdrew all troops in 2011. 

Ms. KAGAN. Correct. 

Mr. COTTON. Based on your best understanding, whether from 

briefings, understanding this is an unclassified hearing, and also 

your professional military judgment, had the President accepted 

that recommendation in 2011, how many troops do you think would 

be in Iraq today? 

Ms. KAGAN. I think that THE residual force that we had left in 

Iraq would be in Iraq, but I think that Iraq would be a different 

place in 2014 if we had, as the United States, left troops behind 

in 2011, because the presence of Americans at that time would 

have been an important check on some of the abuses of the Iraqi 

Government that other members have spoken of, and would be an 

important deterrent both to the Islamic State and to Iranian militias. 

Mr. COTTON. So had we retained that residual force of reportedly 

10,000 to 20,000, it would have provided a check on the Maliki government sectarianism, might have kept the Sunnis and the Kurds 

more tightly in the fold, contributed to the professional development of the Iraqi Army, stopped Iranian intermeddling, certainly 

stopped the Islamic State. Iraq would be in a better place and perVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:41 Dec 19, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 Z:\WORK\_MENA\111914\91457 SHIRL
46

haps we would have many fewer troops there than 10,000 to 20,000 

today? 

Ms. KAGAN. I agree that leaving a residual force behind in early 

phases of turning over not the sovereignty of a government but the 

security of a government and its people to a nation can actually be 

an important way of diminishing the risks of future conflicts and 

the risks of having to redeploy American forces to suppress that 

greater level of conflict in the future. 

Mr. COTTON. And with the President’s latest announcement that 

he would authorize the deployment of another 1,500 troops to Iraq, 

if I have done the rough math correctly, I think we are now somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 troops going to Iraq? 

Ms. KAGAN. Correct. 

Mr. COTTON. Does this seem like a slow motion tacit admission 

by the President that he made a mistake in 2011 in not accepting 

General Austin’s judgment, in your opinion? 

Ms. KAGAN. I do not think that the White House in general has 

fully recognized the error of its judgment in 2011, as a citizen observing. 

Mr. COTTON. Thank you. 

The title of this hearing is ‘‘Next Steps on U.S. Foreign Policy.’’ 

Having reviewed the history of foreign policy, I think it is best to 

hear next steps, and we are of course the Congress, and we are entrusted with some important responsibilities on foreign policy, but 

the executive is obviously entrusted with even more. But looking 

ahead to the following weeks, but maybe in particular 6 or 7 weeks 

from now, could you give us your thoughts on what the next best 

steps are for us as a legislature in our system of government on 

Syria and Iraq, recognizing that the President under our Constitution has a somewhat free hand. 

Start with Ambassador Ford to get his advice and counsel, and 

then maybe move down the panel for as long as we have. 

Mr. FORD. Congressman, I think looking ahead, strong authorization to use military force sends the right messages to all sides. Second, reapproving the money to work with the vetted opposition in 

Syria, the moderate opposition. And then third, demanding accountability from the Iraqis in return for the assistance we provide. 

The corruption problems, the leadership problems that have been 

endemic, I think the Prime Minister of Iraq, Abadi, has made some 

changes among generals, about two dozen. It is great, frankly a little overdue, but it is good. But that won’t be the end of it. There 

are a lot of corrupt junior officers, shall I say, or less senior. So 

those three things to start. 

Mr. COTTON. Ambassador Abrams. 

Mr. ABRAMS. I would just add it is important for the President, 

in the aftermath of the President’s letter to the Ayatollah 

Khamenei, for the U.S. Government to clarify that we are not partners with Assad and that we maintain the policy that Assad must 

go. 

Mr. COTTON. My time has expired, a constraint under which I 

soon will not chafe as the junior Senator from Arkansas, I suppose. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Well, actually, as a parting gift, if you would like 

another 60 seconds to show just how appreciative I am that you 

won by almost 20 points in what was supposed to be a toss-up race. 

47

Mr. COTTON. I will just let Dr. Kagan and Dr. Heydemann answer the question that I posed. 

Ms. KAGAN. I agree with Ambassador Ford, and in addition I recommend that the United States show its strength in the world by 

ending the sequester that is limiting our ability to project force now 

and in the future, and that we strengthen the capabilities and authorizations for our intelligence services so that we can be prepared 

for this global threat. 

Mr. HEYDEMANN. Thank you. 

I have been particularly concerned that the current policy seems 

to believe that we can address the challenge of ISIS without respond to the Syria conflict and respond to the Syria conflict without 

addressing the challenge of ISIS. These two problems cannot be 

separated. There needs to be an integrated strategy that encompasses both of these concerns. And I would encourage Congress to 

use every possible opportunity to move the administration toward 

a policy framework in which the connections between the two are 

very explicit and built into the tactics and strategy that the White 

House advances. 

Mr. COTTON. Thank you all. 

Mr. DESANTIS. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Rhode Island for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you to our witnesses for this important testimony. 

And I particularly thank you, Ambassador Ford, for your extraordinary service to our country. 

I think there is no question that we all recognize the very serious 

threat of ISIL and the responsibility of the United States to have 

a coordinated strategic unified approach to this. I think this hearing is particularly important as we are about to consider a $5.6 billion request from the President to fund additional military action 

in Iraq and Syria, and there are many of us who have been calling 

for a full debate and a war authorization because Congress plays 

an important role in this, and I was pleased to hear everyone say 

that that would be useful in the context of whatis happening. 

First I want to just ask you, Ambassador Ford, you have said a 

couple of times that as one of the three suggestions demand accountability among the Iraqi security forces. What does that look 

like? How would we effectively ensure accountability? Because I 

think everyone here would agree with that, but we are all very familiar with the pervasive corruption in the Iraqi security forces. 

What kinds of things, what sorts of measures would you recommend that we could press for that would bring the kind of accountability that would make them a better partner? 

Mr. FORD. The reason the Iraqi Army fell apart in Mosul and the 

blitzkrieg went all the way down to the outskirts of Baghdad is because the Iraqi Army had bad leadership and it was corrupt. It is 

a lesson to us that if they don’t fix this problem, no matter how 

much money, how much equipment we give them, it is not going 

to work. 

So what that looks like to me is that as we send advisors in, 

when they identify this commander over here, that commander 

over there is a problem, we are not going to work with that unit 

48

at all until he is fixed, until he is changed. It may require, for example, even general flag officers who are encouraging lower level 

officers to say that their command staff needs salaries for 1,000 soldiers when they know perfectly well there are only 300 on duty and 

they are pocketing 700 soldiers’ salaries for their own use, maybe 

that general has to go too. 

But you have to be able to say to them: We can’t work with you 

like this. And I have to be honest, I have not seen us do that very 

often in Iraq, frankly. Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen was talking 

about what Brett McGurk, Deputy Assistant Secretary Brett 

McGurk had said. We knew a lot of these problems were in the 

Iraqi Army before. This is not a surprise to us. But I don’t know 

that we were insisting that we can’t work with them if they don’t 

make changes. 

Mr. CICILLINE. And do you, Ambassador Ford, Dr. Kagan, see 

any evidence that the current efforts underway both with air 

strikes and other efforts on the ground are having any impact on 

the Assad regime’s kind of recalculation or reassessment? Are these 

efforts in any way causing the regime to contemplate a different 

path forward? Because everyone speaks about the necessity of some 

political solution, which, frankly, in the context of the facts on the 

ground, it is hard to imagine these power-sharing discussions and 

other things. So I am just wondering whether we are seeing any 

evidence at all that that is making a difference. 

Mr. FORD. In some cases, Congressman,it has been negative difference. Let me give you an example. The Islamic State had elements of the Assad regime surrounded in a provincial capital in 

eastern Syria, a place called Deir ez-Zor, been under siege for 

months, and there was an attack lining up that would have cost 

the Assad regime a lot of soldiers, a lot of equipment. American air 

strikes forced the Islamic State to withdraw. The regime was able 

to reopen supply lines. And actually what the regime did was shift 

air aspects to go hit moderates up in northern Syria. You might remember there was reporting in the American media about how the 

regime intensified air operations against our friends because of the 

air strikes that we were doing. 

So I do think that a powerful authorization to use military force 

will compel Assad to wonder if the Americans over time will not 

adjust their tactics to include his, frankly, slowly degrading air 

force. 

Mr. CICILLINE. And could I just ask—I too won my election by 

20 points—if I could have 1 more minute. 

With respect to this sort of choice, and it is not necessarily a 

choice, but as we think about this effort to continue to train and 

arm the Syrian opposition versus—or in addition to—or sort of allocating resources to arming the Peshmerga, what is your assessment, Dr. Kagan, Ambassador Ford, Doctor, in terms of this likely 

success of this arm-and-train effort of the Syrian opposition? And 

if you had unlimited resources, where would you put those resources as between those two choices? 

Ms. KAGAN. The effort to arm and train the Syrian moderate opposition is essential, but we, the United States, have asymmetric 

capabilities that we need to bring to bear on the fight in Syria in 

order for that moderate opposition to survive long enough to be 

49

armed and trained and make a meaningful difference on the battlefield. Namely, we do need to provide them with close air support, 

and we do need to reconsider targeting the Assad regime, and in 

particular his asymmetric capability, which comes in his use of air 

power against those moderates. We need to have those things together in Syria in order to create conditions for success. 

Mr. HEYDEMANN. I endorse everything that Dr. Kagan said, but 

would add that we also need to invest adequately in creating the 

appropriate infrastructure to ensure that the forces that we train 

and equip can perform effectively and that in the areas in which 

they are operational we will not simply be clearing ISIS from communities that will then see the return of alternative extremist 

groups once that task has been accomplished. 

That means building the appropriate command-and-control structures and political accountability structures led by Syrians that 

will ensure the effectiveness of the train-and-equip mission over 

time. And I am concerned that significant questions about what 

that infrastructure will look like have not yet been adequately answered. 

Mr. CICILLINE. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the indulgence. 

Thank you. Yield back. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Gentleman’s time has expired. 

Just real quickly, Ambassador Ford, you had mentioned that an 

authorization of force would send a message to Iran. A lot of us are 

concerned about these nuclear negotiations. The President has 

said—well, it has been reported—that they don’t want to even go 

through Congress. They want to keep it away from Congress, which 

tells me that it may not be a deal that would merit approval from 

Congress or the American people. And so I am certainly losing patience with that. 

Do you think a vote against a bad nuclear deal or a vote to reimpose tough sanctions would also be a good signal to send to Iran 

vis-a`-vis our fight in Syria and Iraq? 

Mr. FORD. The most important thing, Congressman, with respect 

to Iraq and to Syria is to get the Iranians to adjust their behavior. 

They can’t just use Shi’a militia to fix the Islamic State problem 

on the eastern front in Iraq. The Shi’a militia will drive the Sunni 

Arabs right into the hands further of the Islamic State. And in 

Syria, the Iranians have got to accept that Bashar is going to go 

and there is going to be some other kind of a government. 

So I don’t know how the nuclear negotiations are going to directly affect that, but what I do think is that we need to find a way 

to get the Iranians to understand that there may be other ways to 

fix the Islamic State problem without doing it the way they are 

doing it, which is actually making the problem infinitely worse. 

To be frank, Assad and the Iranians are helping create the Islamic State problem. I talked about this aggrieved Sunni community. The Iranians are the biggest single problem behind that. 

Mr. DESANTIS. No, absolutely. And, look, just from my time, I 

was in the Al Anbar province, and the more Iran is involved, I 

mean, that is a total repellant. I mean, they would much prefer 

ISIS than an Iranian-backed government. And so it would make 

the whole enterprise, I think, go up in smoke. 

50

Mr. FORD. You understand because you were in Anbar. This is 

the accountability aspect that I am talking about. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Absolutely. 

Well, I just wanted to thank the witnesses. We really appreciated 

your testimony, taking the time here to answer our questions. I 

think all your thoughts were very considered and I know it will 

help the committee members very much. 

And so with that, this hearing stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5 o’clock p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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